At last, I got to The Point. Which is where my odyssey down the Yorkshire coast finished today, at the end of Spurn Head: the four-mile-long sandy spit, at times no wider than a tennis court, which wanders recklessly out into the North Sea from the bottom right-hand corner of East Yorkshire. See map of route
I didn’t have far to go. I slept soundly last night in the bird observatory bunkhouse at Kilnsea, at the top of the spit.
But getting down Spurn is not straightforward. Until December 2013 there was a narrow concrete road all the way, but a historic storm surge that month washed away a half-mile stretch of it near the mainland.
It’s now closed to traffic, and in any case only rugged four-wheel-drive vehicles can make the difficult journey across the deep sands. Only rangers and the RNLI lifeboat crew who work shifts down the end can drive it… but walkers and cyclists can trudge their way.
I was muttering choice language as I pushed my MTB laboriously. If punk ever comes back, ‘Sandy Spit’ could be my band member name.
Once back on the road however it was an easy, solitary ride – it was only eight o’clock – down to the Head where the lighthouse and buildings are.
En route, just where the road begins again, is a High Tide Shelter. A handful of times a year, the sea washes right over the sands, cutting off Spurn and making it an island. For those who misjudge their timing, the shed offers safe refuge, though one a bit short on entertainment: there’s no wifi or phone signal here. So, er, don’t misjudge your timing.
There’s been a lifeboat station at the end of Spurn since 1824. In the early 1900s there was effectively a village out here, with ten houses and a school. Until recently there were still a few families living here full-time, in the most far-flung, extraordinarily located community in England.
I came in 2008 and chatted to some of them in their cafe. In some ways it was idyllic and remote, but in other ways it was awful and remote. The nearest shop was ten miles away in Patrington, the nearest city a half-day round trip in Hull.
In 2012 the families moved out. The houses continued to be occupied, but by the lifeboat crew only, staying in shifts. But in 2023 the jetty used to launch the lifeboats was declared unsafe, so the station and its crew abandoned Spurn completely. All the houses are now empty.
Spurn is a remarkable place for birdwatching: migrating flocks use the spit as a landmark for stopoffs either way, and the wide variety of habitats means there’s a huge variety of species for birders to log (hence the presence of that observatory-bunkhouse at Kilnsea). There wasn’t much to see through my travel binoculars this grey late-autumn morning, though.
Having admired the lighthouse and the monumental chalk banks that were created in the mid-1800s to stop Spurn from washing away, I left my bike (unlocked; casual theft did not seem an overwhelming threat here) and walked a few hundred yards through the dunes to the Very End of the Yorkshire coast: The Point.
It’s a curious place, four miles out to sea, mighty ships passing silently right in front of you, the choppy grey North Sea on one side, the murky brown Humber on the other, and glimpsed horizons of Grimsby, Immingham’s smokestack forest, Holderness’s laminar plain, and somewhere over there, Hull, where I grew up.
I love the austere extremity of the place, and I want my ashes scattered right here. That would be The End. Not for a while, though. Say 2063? But I’ll be back before then. Still intact, I hope.
My coast ride has been a pleasure from start to 150-mile finish: three and a half days of rugged scenery, fascinating places and lively people. Of course, there’s no such thing as the ‘Greatest County’, or ‘Greatest Coast’. But Yorkshire is the greatest county, and this is the greatest coast.
Miles today: 29
Miles from Redcar to Spurn Point: 149
MAP